I try to avoid softballs. Mashable is so good at it, there’s no sense in serving them up.

Predictions are made with no insider info. They’re based only on what I think will happen.

What I think will happen and what I want to happen, are, in fact, 2 completely different things.

At the end of the year, I grade myself on how I did. Each prediction is analyzed and either 1 point (completely right), a .5 point (partially correct) or 0 points (totally missed) are awarded.

With that out of the way, here we go! For 2016, I’m going with a high volume approach. I’m going to list out 15 predictions in total, in order of most likely to happen to least likely.

VR, be it Oculus Rift, Cardboard or whatever, will fail in a manner only bested by Google glass. The price point will be too high, the platform too closed and the novelty too limited.

FourSquare will be purchased for less than 60% of it’s high point valuation. It will sell, not to Microsoft or Yahoo!, but to a platform like Yelp!, FitBit or OpenTable. Basically, it will sell to something unexpected.

Marissa Mayer, will choose to pursue other opportunities and the board will thank her for her efforts and service.

There will be a major hack of either “connected” cars or the connected home. You will see a major exploit of something like HomeKit, Weave or BMW’s connected service.

A major sport will adopt digital technology in a way that changed their game and starts to make humans obsolete. For example, we’ll see a chip put in footballs and in the pylons to determine if a touchdown is a touchdown.

Tesla will start or continue, depending on your point of view, it’s long, slow, death spiral.

Chip credit cards will bring retail to such a slow crawl for checkout, that NFC forms for payment (eg Apple Pay), will become promoted by retailers, thus doubling, if not tripling, NFC transactions.

Social media will influence the election in a way that will bring about changes to how elections are run. For example, it’s well known that when you tell a population X candidate is winning by Y%, voter turnout suffers.

When Donald Trump wins the election we will see a re-writing of how the role that the media plays, in general. This will be the tipping point for the decline of mainstream / traditional media and the rise of platforms (particularly, social media) as more important than TV and companies like CNN.

Snapchat will look to go public. It’s IPO will flop.

Twitter will rebound and regain 25% – 30% of its previous stock, high point of $69.

Cell phones will reverse trend and get smaller, not bigger.

Drone delivery will happen. Amazon will be first, followed by Taco Bell.

Uber will face a period of growth flattening, due to democratic/blue states siding with unions to restrict growth. This will force Uber to seek new avenues for growth, beyond its core transportation delivery business or via other markets.

About

Dad to Cora and John. Love ironing, bourbon and BBQ; not necessarily in that order. Living life, like I stole it. I'm always up for a spirited conversation. These are my thoughts and ramblings, not those of my employer.
Learn More